A few months ago I wrote a Daily Kos story with a snarky, clickbait title:
Third Way has a point, Democratic Socialism is HORRIBLE for Business
In that diary, I presented the results from a number of measures of national well-being, showing how those countries which identify as social democracies tend to show up near the top of each of these lists. In this diary, I wish to present the information in a more straight-forward manner, and incorporate information from the comment section of the earlier diary which add to the overall picture.
What these various measures will help show is that, far from inhibiting growth, productivity, innovation, freedom, and happiness — things often claimed by its detractors — Democratic Socialism is highly correlated with exceptional performance in each of these areas. And as such, it also suggests that perhaps there is a better way than what we have been doing in the USA for the past several decades. For while we have many social democratic programs, they have been under relentless attack from the right since before they were signed into law up through the present.
Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public roads, bridges, schools, parks, water treatment facilities, and more — all socialism ... even those socialist snowplow drivers who dug the east coast out from under the Snowpocalypse. Yet via unrelenting propaganda, encouraged by the Lewis Powell memo in 1971, the political right has succeeded in making government a bad word.
This is by design. A truth that was portrayed by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels is that government is the only power strong enough to counter big business. If government is too small or weak, business interests buy out the process and abuse the common citizens with impunity. We see this now with our ineffectual regulatory processes, staffed with people who can look forward to rewarding careers as they pass through the revolving door between business / lobbying / and government … as long as they don’t rock the boat.
Why are these folks SO opposed to Democratic Socialism? Greed. It really is that simple. They have lobbied and spent money on politicians for years to buy the kind of tax system that minimizes their contributions to society, even as they run multi-billion-dollar enterprises which suck as much as possible from the US treasury as they can in the form of tax credits, and government support of their frontline workers who they are too cheap to pay a living wage. To paraphrase a line from Chinatown,
“How much better can they eat?”
Why does clutching that extra couple hundred million from their billion dollar-plus yearly income mean so much to these people? How many billions will it take to satisfy them? Asking the wealthy to pay taxes based on a several tiered progressive tax structure is not only just, it is far healthier for our entire nation.
So onto the rankings …
[kbman climbs down from soapbox. Also, I apologize for formatting variations in the lists. Cutting and pasting from the other diary is making it difficult to manage some of the features such as Italics and bullet-listing.]
Most Socialist Countries*
Countries deemed the most socialist
1 — China
2 — Denmark
3 — Finland
4 — The Netherlands
5 — Canada
6 — Sweden
7 — Norway
8 — Ireland
9 — New Zealand
10 — Belgium
Best Countries for Business
Forbes Magazine’s Best Countries for Business list:
(The numbers on the right are their rankings, if applicable, on the most socialist countries’ list.)
1 — Denmark — 2
2 — Hong Kong — part of #1 China, but meh, not a fair comparison
3 — New Zealand — 9
4 — Ireland — 8
5 — Sweden — 6
6 — Canada — 5
7 — Norway — 7
8 — Singapore - not listed in top 10 most socialist
9 — Switzerland - not listed in top 10 most socialist
10 — Finland — 3
11 — The Netherlands — 4
12 — Belgium — 10
Interesting , and BTW, the US was #18
National Prosperity
Here is a list referenced again by Forbes Magazine, this is called the Legatum Prosperity Index and is based on scores in eight different categories, Economy, Entrepreneurship & Opportunity, Governance, Education, Health, Safety and Security, Personal Freedom, and Social Capital. Again, the number on the right is their ranking in the socialism list.
- 1 — Norway — 7
- 2 — Switzerland - not listed in top 10 most socialist
- 3 — Denmark — 2
- 4 — New Zealand — 9
- 5 — Sweden — 6
- 6 — Canada — 5
- 7 — Australia - not listed in top 10 most socialist
- 8 — The Netherlands — 4
- 9 — Finland — 3
- 10 — Ireland — 8
- 11 — The United States of America - not listed in top 10 most socialist
Happiness
Bloomberg:
“Happiness seems to be most abundant“Happiness seems to be most abundant a long way from the equator. At least according to the new World Happiness Report 2015. The 10 happiest countries are”
- 1 — Switzerland - not listed in top 10 most socialist
- 2 — Iceland - not listed in top 10 most socialist
- 3 — Denmark — 2
- 4 — Norway — 7
- 5 — Canada — 5
- 6 — Finland — 3
- 7 — Netherlands — 4
- 8 — Sweden — 6
- 9 — New Zealand — 9
- 10 — Australia - not listed in top 10 most socialist
Taxes
This is an insightful analysis from acerimusdux
Another way to look at it, is to look at National Government taxes and revenues as a share of GDP. Looking at your Forbes list of best places to do business, this is where they rank on that list:
- 6. Denmark 55.5%
- 166. Hong Kong 19.7%
- 34. New Zealand 41.1%
- 76. Ireland 32.8%
- 10. Sweden 52.1%
- 50. Canada 37.6%
- 5. Norway 57.5%
- 192. Singapore 15.2%
- 73. Switzerland 33.6%
- 9. Finland 53.0%
- 19. The Netherlands 47.0%
- 13. Belgium 50.7%
Even here we have half of these countries ranking in the top 20, and only 2 in the bottom half. Moreover, Singapore and Hong Kong may not be bad places to do business, but may not be the best places to live.
So looking at the top 10 from the Legatum Prosperity Index, and where they rank:
- 5. Norway — 57.5%
- 73. Switzerland — 33.6%
- 6. Denmark — 55.5%
- 34. New Zealand — 41.1%
- 10. Sweden — 52.1%
- 50. Canada — 37.6%
- 75. Australia — 33.3%
- 19. The Netherlands — 47.0%
- 9. Finland 53.0%
- 76. Ireland — 32.8%
It appears the most prosperous countries have national government revenues of anywhere from 30%-60% of GDP. The U.S. is only at 17%. Perhaps the U.S., as a federal republic of states, is a little different. But even if we include state revenues, we’re still only at about 28%. That’s still not in the top half, and definitely on the low end as far as prosperous countries.
Innovation
This comment was provided by LoneStarMike:
And look at some of the companies that are based in Democratic Socialist countries.
Take Sweden, for example.
10 world-shaping Swedish companies
Sweden is the birthplace of many successful innovative companies. According to British Wired Magazine, Sweden has the most digitally connected economy in the world, and its forward-thinking culture fosters innovation. Here are ten companies of Swedish origin shaping the world.
They include AstraZeneca, Electrolux, Ericsson, H&M, Ikea & Skype.
Freedom
Ah yes, the last bastion of the hardcore anti-socialists in the US … “What about personal freedom, huh? Just by coincidence, around the same time as my previous diary on this was published, there was another diary from Ovid titled, The Cato Institute and Freedom.
I will draw heavily from that diary here …
The Cato Institute: The Human Freedom Index — A Global Measurement of Personal, Civil, and Economic Freedom.
[from Ovid]
“If you’re not familiar with the Cato Institute, they were founded in 1974 as the Charles Koch Foundation (yes, one of the Koch brothers). They are definitely not going to vote for Bernie Sanders. The Cato Institute is basically your typical “let the rich have their way” Libertarians (and overwhelmingly white males, per standard Libertarian demographics).
So back to “The Human Freedom Index”. What metrics do they use to define freedom? They claim to use 76 distinct indicators including:
- Rule of Law
- Security and Safety
- Movement
- Religion
- Association, Assembly, and Civil Society
- Expression
- Relationships
- Size of Government
- Legal System and Property Rights
- Access to Sound Money
- Freedom to Trade Internationally
- Regulation of Credit, Labor, and Business”
Here is their list of most free countries, again with those socialists denoted …
- Hong Kong * — 1
- Switzerland - not listed in top 10 most socialist
- Finland - 3
- Denmark — 2
- New Zealand — 9
- Canada — 5
- Australia - not listed in top 10 most socialist
- Ireland — 8
- United Kingdom - not listed in top 10 most socialist
- Sweden — 6
A note regarding racial / cultural diversity
One of the arguments raised against Democratic Socialism was that many of the places where it has been successful are fairly homogeneous populations. Here was my response to that claim:
Yes, we are far more complex in our collective heritage than the Scandinavian countries. How does that make the workings of socialism not as effective for business? Canada is a pretty big and diverse country as well yet they seem to be doing OK with their socialist tendencies. My view is that the ONLY impediment that racial and cultural diversity presents to successful socialist programs is that it presents those on the extreme right with a wedge issue to use to wield the way that Ronald Reagan did with his politics of white resentment. Blame all of their problems on those undeserving minorities who are sucking on the government teat. The thing is, in an established social democracy, the people aren’t struggling, and they have nothing to feel resentment about. It will only be a true lunatic fringe who continue to race-bait ala Reagan.
* — The list of most socialist countries comes from a blog named peerform.com. It was the first Google hit on this query. The list seems quite reasonable on inspection, and there are blurbs at the site for each entry in the list providing the author’s justification for that country’s inclusion. I have no idea what the political leanings of this blog or the author(s) are, what their history is, etc. They appear to be a peer-to-peer lending site. In any event, if they are awful people or involved in something nefarious, please restrain yourself from using that as the basis for ad hominem attacks on this diary. Thank you — kbman